At York they halted for a few days--few because the inhabitants would stand their presence no longer, and, after paying £150 for their hotel bills, and for the Vandalism they had committed in the town, they drove on to Windermere, and put up at the Ferry Hotel. Here they stayed for nearly four days, disporting themselves like Yahoos. Wilson, as is well known, was “Admiral of the Windermere Fleet,” and chanced, while they were in the neighbourhood, to hold a regatta, giving his friends a tea at Ullock’s Hotel, Bowness, when the amusements of the day were over. Hither the travelling adventurers came by water; at the landing stage, however, one of the number, seeing a fisherman washing his nets in the lake, crept behind him, and with a shove and a hoarse laugh sent him into the water. Westmoreland blood is not easily cooled, and the peasant, seizing his attacker, ducked him within an inch of his life. Nothing daunted the other three proceeded to the hotel, and entered a room where tea was laid out for a large party; to knock the tray over, to pull the cloth off, to dance upon the tea-pot till it was flattened, and the crockery till it was smashed into a thousand smithereens, was, of course, only the work of an instant. Hearing the clatter, Mrs. Wilson hurried downstairs, and Lord M----r, mistaking her for the landlady, seized her by the neck, and tried to ravish a kiss. At this critical moment the Professor entered--one blow “from the shoulder” laid the noble lord at his feet; then, like a genuine old heathen warrior, placing one foot upon the neck of the prostrate wretch--“if you other two scoundrels are not out of this room in an instant, I’ll squeeze the man’s breath out of his body.” They heard--and fled. Wilson, in a fury of excitement, took boat to Belle Isle, and urged Mr. Curwen to act as his friend. Mr. Curwen represented that Lord M----r was utterly beneath contempt--that no professor of moral philosophy had ever been engaged in a cause of honour; that all his friends had been representing him as a quiet, orderly man--in fact, brought forward a thousand arguments which might have been of the utmost weight to a reasonable being--but not just at present to Wilson; he flung out of the room, crossed the lake, and sought a gallant naval officer, Captain Br----, who, a true Sir Lucius O’Trigger, said the matter was in good hands, and looked up his pistols. They adjourned to Elleray to wait the expected challenge: but on the evening of the following day, getting tired of inaction, they set out on a drive to see why the storm did not commence. Further search was endless. Lord M----r and his friends had taken to their coach and fled; they could not, however, get their horses out of the stables until they had paid an hotel bill of £120 and £20 to the landlord of Ullock’s Hotel for damages. Thus the affair ended happily, and Wilson was able to return peaceably to Edinburgh to fulfil his new duties.